Payment data processing is used to facilitate and maintain the reliability of electronic payment transactions. Such electronic payment transactions are typically initiated with a point of sale device or device. The point of sale device can be used to read a credit card number from data that is encoded in a magnetic stripe of the credit card. Alternatively, the credit card number can be manually entered by an operator into a terminal, or other forms of electronic payment devices and procedures can be used. Payment data and other suitable data, such as device identification data, is then included in the transaction record which is subsequently transmitted to a payment processor and ultimately to the financial institution that issued the credit card or other electronic payment device. Thus, the reliability of the data entered into the point of sale device is a cornerstone to the subsequent processing of electronic payment data.
There are presently many manufacturers of point of sale devices. It is commonplace for each different manufacturer to have a different operating system for its point of sale device, where the application and configuration data are typically a series of messages that can be downloaded onto the device after the device is installed at its operating location. Usually, an operator will set up the device according to instructions received with the device, and then will cause the device to contact a terminal management system that will then provide the device with data messages such as operating system software, application software, configuration data, and other suitable data and software.
Because each manufacturer has a different operating system, application software, and configuration data for its point of sale devices, it is commonplace for point of sale devices that are provided by different manufacturers to be managed by different terminal management systems, and even for different models of point of sale devices that are provided by the same manufacturer to be managed by different terminal management systems. While it is known that the terminal management systems for manufacturers with different device operating systems can be combined, combining the terminal management systems for multiple manufacturers has not been done, in part because of the incompatibility of the databases in which the device data for a given user's fleet of devices is stored. Such databases are often designed to different standards, which makes combining them difficult or impossible. In addition, as a database grows larger, it becomes more difficult to modify and back-up the database. Modifications to the database must typically be made while the database is offline, which means that the terminal management system is inoperable while the database is being modified. In addition, it is difficult to operate the database from more than one physical location, which increases the possibility that the database could be made unavailable due to a single component failure.
The inability to combine terminal management systems for multiple point of sale device manufacturers can result in problems when many different point of sale devices are owned and/or managed by an organization. The organization must typically operate physically separate facilities, or must configure the facilities so as to route the program requests to a suitable system for processing. Operator attention is frequently required to correct problems that arise from database incompatibility and unavailability.